Internal Combustion (IC) engines such as a four-stroke IC engine include a valve train for operation of valves that control timing and quantity of gas flow into cylinders and removal of exhaust products therefrom. The valves are generally opened and closed by a camshaft that is synchronized to the crankshaft by a chain, belt, or gear. The camshaft actuates a valve lifter which in turn actuates the valve stem through a push rod and rocker arm.
A clearance or gap referred to as valve lash is provided between the rocker arm and the valve stem. This valve lash may need to be optimally adjusted so as to operate the engine at high performance. However, the valve lash may change and needs to be reset after certain hours of operation of the engine. The time interval to check the valve lash is generally mentioned in the service manuals of each engine, published by their respective OEMs. Accordingly, there is a need to adjust the valve lash periodically.
Valve lash measurement is generally done using manual methods, wherein feeler gauges are utilized to measure the valve lash and accordingly adjust the valve lash by tightening or loosening of a screw of the rocker arm. However, this process is laborious, time consuming and prone to minute errors, due to accessibility and repeatability issues on the engine valves.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,316,699 discloses a method and a device for measuring and adjusting a valve clearance value to a desired value in an engine having a rocker-arm-type valve. The method described in '699 patent is cumbersome as a center-to-center distance between ball-ends of the measuring probes is measured, and a valve lash is determined based on the known values of probes diameter and measured value of center-to-center distance. The holding means, moving means, and driving means of the probes, adds cost to the measuring equipment. Also, the calculations required to determine the center-to-center distance is time consuming. Moreover, it is common to repeatedly check the center-to-center distance prior to achieving the final valve lash, which is tedious and undesirable.
Therefore, the present disclosure may overcome one or more of the deficiencies provided by the background references.